I have not done much cabinet work since high school and am building a corner computer desk out of some of the nice walnut I have sawn over the last couple of years. I have tried to be careful not to put too much glue on but a few joints are showing glue I need to remove for finishing :'( The base wood is english walnut and the trim is soft maple. The glue is Tightbond II. So far I have tried:
Sanding with a palm sander --- some success but very difficult in the insides of corners
Scraping with a chissel --- some broken edges and light gouges (soft maple) :o
The best remidy is being careful to prevent showing glue but anyone have some tricks that might make glue removal a little easier? :P
Would appreciate any advice short of explosives.........
Everything I have read about glue removal is to get it while it's still wet.
Stew
One of the best scrapers is piece of bandsaw band. The portable mills 1 1/4" to 2" bands are ideal. Frequent sharpening with a stone to produce that sharp burr and it's a cutting fool. You can get the surface much smoother, usually, than with sandpaper.
There is a technique to sharpening scrapers.
You an also make them into any shape or size. :)
Tom, do you mean sharpening the non toothed side? That is a great idea. I have heard of people taking old handsaws and cutting out pieces to make hand scrapers, althoug you have to cut in the right direction, as the old saws had a grain to the metal. Leonard Lees book on sharpening is great, and shows how to burnish a scraper.
Dave
Try a damp sponge on the joint before the glue sets, saves a lot of time later.
If the glue on a piece has fully cured, I use a SHARP chisel. If the chisel is not sharp enough to shave with, it is not sharp enough. Technique with the chisel is the next most important thing at this point. Never use a mallet for this. Also, using a paring or side to side slicing motion is better than a straight push through a bead of glue. Unless you have enough space to get the back of your chisel totally flat against the surface of the work, do not use the chisel with the bevel facing up or it will cut into your piece. Instead use the chisel bevel down.
If you do not have a bead of glue to deal with, but instead have a smear of glue on the surface of the wood, I would use a freshly sharpened scraper as Tom has suggested.
If you do not have sharp chisels or scrapers and do not feel 100% confident of your sharpening abilities, it will be worth your time to educate yourself on sharpening technique. I used to think I knew how to sharpen chisels and such until I really learned how.
I like to put blue tape around the glue lines prior to glue up. If not I wait till it tacks up and scrap it off with a dull cabinet scraper and wash the residue off with a toothbrush and water.
Great ideas. Thanks to all. I will get a sharpening book and look at getting the chisels sharper. The use of a sponge and tooth brush is a good idea also prior to set up. Last night I put a piece of 150 grit sand paper over a wide putty knife to apply pressure in the corners and sanded with the grain and it worked fairly well given enough time. Luckily the Tightbond II is sandable. The blue tape is a good idea also.
Now Im seeing the value of all of the special glue application gagets you see in the catalogues...........specail bottles, spreaders etc. I am normally very careful with glue but I was using biscuits to join the face trim pieces to the cabinet and overestimated the needed glue. I also glued a pretty large number of pieces at once so was focusing on the fit and getting them clamped in time and lapsed on the glue cleanup. A few lessons learned.
When I use biscuits I cover most the vertical surfaces with wax paper. Its awful hard to keep the squeeze out from running out like a river at times.
I think the blue tape is the answer. I have sponged right away for years but there is always some left, or spread out the interferes with the final finish.
I use a stiff artist's brush wet with water in tight spots. Much easier to get the glue off while it is still uncured. I also use a wet sponge on flatter surfaces. The key is to wipe it off immediately after squeeze-out...within 5 minutes. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of sharp chisels ::).
More advice for next time.... ::)
Try prefinishing the piece prior to assembly. Lets say you are glueing a face frame to the box using biscuits. I would clamp the assembly together with no glue, then put my first coat of finish on. Disassemble, sand the first coat, then assemble with glue. Any glue squezze out will not soak into the wood at that point.
Also, I wait for the glue to stiffen prior to touching it with anything. After it stiffens up, then a sharp chisel will clean it up nice. Follow with a cabinet scraper if needed after that.
But right now, a scraper is your best bet. Try to blend the scraping over a large area to mask over removal of wood.
Sometimes, when I get glue squeezeout, I scrub it up immediately with an overly damp paper towel and then wipe it dry with a dry paper towel.
Other times, I'll let the glue set until it is firm but not dried hard. Then I stand a chisel straight up on it's edge and scrape the glue off.
Other times, I'll let the glue dry hard and then take a good sharp paint scraper (the kind you pull) and scrape the joint. I use a wide scraper so there is less chance of gouging. Then I sand.
When I'm building something that will be stained, I like to stain all the wood before assembly. That eliminates the possibility of getting glue on the bare wood and then when you stain you have an unstained area where the dried glue keeps the stain from soaking into the wood. Sometimes you won't even see that glue until you go to stain the piece.
I don't like using any techniques with water to remove wet glue. It will swell the wood fiber and that area will let the stain soak in deeper. That spot will be darker than the surrounding area. I always hate to see Norm grab the sponge and wipe the wet glue and water all around the furniture. That can't look good. I imagine that some of that glue will set in the pores of the course grained wood. I like to inspect the glueup within 15 minutes of the clamping and cut off the excess glue with a chisel. At that time it will have a hard skin and cut off really well. Scraping is the best way to attack it now. Even if it shows a little after the stain or first coat of clear, you can scrape it again, touch it with a little 220, and add more stain. Do all that before the stain is dry.
I'm in the same school of thought as you low48. Stain does not get into the wood fibers as well as wood with no glue in them. Yoy can often see it. I have preferred using tape over the years as many have stated.
A good scraper as Tom describes will work wonders though. I have never used a band blade but I bet that would make a good one. I have some Velander scrapers that I have been real happy with.
Not to be argumentative, if you use water to scrub the wet glue off the piece, it will be fine. Since I always sand through at least 3 grits, there is no raised grain. But, the chisels and scrapers work too if the quarters are not too tight like in corners and joints. In those places, judicious gluing and immediate excess glue removal with a stiff wet artist brush or tooth brush will do wonders for your subsequent finishing attitude :).
Kevjay, where did you get your Valender scrapers? Maybe available in a catalouge?
Quote from: WDH on June 26, 2007, 10:54:06 PM. . . . . if you use water to scrub the wet glue off the piece, it will be fine. . . . .
That's entirely too broad a statement and I bet you know it after a little more thought. I would give an example why but why don't you do it ???
Quote from: farmer77 on June 26, 2007, 11:36:44 PM
Kevjay, where did you get your Valender scrapers? Maybe available in a catalouge?
No I inherited them from my mom's uncle who knew tools before I l knew him.
I keep a couple litres of water on hand with a good damp sponge to remove the clue. I don't apply finish for at least a couple days or more after assembly, so the water is long dried off. In fact the water does not penetrate that rapidly like it does in a sponge. I use water while sanding as well to lift the burrs that might be lifted by the finish. I spend hours sanding. Did I say it takes a lot of sanding for a good surface? Try using butternut. ;) :D :D
Obviously there are many ways to skin this cat. I guess it just depends on what method works for you. Personally I use a junker chisel and take off the squeeze out before it completely dries. The squeeze out will be skinned over but still wet to some degree inside. Any small spots of glue left are taken off with final sanding. I find that when I try the wet sponge technique I end up missing a spot where I've spread out the glue and it shows up in a big way when you put finish on. The sharp chisel/dry glue technique doesn't work for me on tabletops because inevitably I end up chipping out some wood. I have used the sharp chisel/dry glue method on some missed spots where two pieces are joined (corners not edge to edge) and the wood chipout problem seems to be less than on a flat top.
As for glue up equipment, it's just like so many other aspects of woodworking. You can easily spend lots of money on fancy gadgets but simple is often better. My glue bottle of choice is a super cheap, clear plastic ketchup/mustard bottle you can buy at sam's club, etc. I put the glue on with the bottle then use a small, cheap, disposable, metal handled brush to spread the glue out. A tin can screwed to the side of my clamp rack has water in it and I drop my brushes in the can and they're ready to use next time. I learned this from a custom furniture shop I worked at for a short time. They built very nice, very expensive furniture, but utilized the quickest, easiest, least expensive techniques.
Water isn't too bad on items as long as you let it dry. I like to raise the grain with water prior to the final scraping anyway since I usually use a water based poly coat. I've done it so often that I raise the grain for everything including varnish, and oil based paint :D
If water doesn't effect the wood , I wonder why those drops of sweat (during final sanding) make a darker spot when I stain? Must be magical somehow. I also agree that if I can get to all those areas with 3 grits of sandpaper it will be okay. But, if I would try to wipe down an inside corner with water and then try to get 3 grits of sanding on that inside corner, the sanding scratches going across the grain would make it look even worse than if I let a little glue there. In some of these inside corners I don't plan on doing any sanding because this is the final assembly and sandpaper just can't get into that inside 90 degree corner. I think we are trying to paint all this discussion with a broad paint brush to try and make general statements about glue removal. There are just going to be places where water will work (on the face of a panel), and places it won't (inside corners).
Quote from: low_48 on June 27, 2007, 11:08:45 PM
If water doesn't effect the wood , I wonder why those drops of sweat (during final sanding) make a darker spot when I stain? Must be magical somehow.
Couldn't possibly be all the oils and salt in your sweat could it? ;) :o
To get those inside corners I walk the water and sponge to her. You need a good quality sponge with a good well defined edge to it. The sponges I use are more like scouring pads, but non marking to the wood surface, not those open pore sponges that look like Swiss cheese. I always pre-sand drawers pieces and shelfing pieces before assembly. But, that don't help with the dry glue that squeezed out.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_sponge.jpg)
cheers
depending on the wood you could get some water spots, I'm thinking that most of the spots are caused by minerals in the water reacting with the tanic acids in the wood species though.
Good looking sponge Swamp...
This thread is very helpfull for those of us that have not done alot of finishing.
Some other factors for the success of the sponge are likely to be the type of wood, type of glue, type of stain or finish, amount of water and what the woodworker feels is acceptable as far as perfection..........eh? :) :)
On my butternut projects last winter I damp sponged and sanded 2 or 3 times. I never seen any stains and I would think it is similar to walnut, except lighter in weight and color. You guys seen about every square inch in the pictures. I had clue squeeze on about every joint, but I sponged it up and it didn't dry into the grain. There are some woods like osage and mulberry maybe that the heart extractives might dissolve and run into the sap making a stain I suppose. ;) It's one or the other or both that will dissolve in water and color the water. I forget some of this wood tech stuff. ::)
SD
Which glue did you use?
Lepages Carpenter's glue, holds 1000 lbs.